Balt prodded me back to fetch the other tank. Hard work. We crouched before the amalgo, gazing at our cargoes, Balt with satisfaction, me sweating and grunting with agony. We pushed the first of those eerie tanks between the parallel plates. The thing fit between the plates with only inches to spare. A flash of light almost blinded me, a sizzle, a flare, then the tank and alien vanished. The plates resumed their familiar dull, greenish glow.
Balt grunted and jostled my shoulder, a signal to help ease the other tank through. We did. It vanished with equal alacrity. Gone. Obviously such cargoes were meant to travel through these transporter highways. Balt pushed me through next. Vertigo hit me like a hurricane. Again that tickling sensation clutched my nerve ends and the dizzying freefall marked a dark journey through some wormhole. Not a bon voyage.
I came too, blinking in exhaustion back in the room on Othwan. Balt shoved me aside as before. It was as if I’d been gone only a second. Balt, the glib fuck, appeared to suffer no side effects. A half dozen eyes raked over us as if we were lab specimens. Hands snatched at the tanks, sliding them to the safety of the nearby wall. Mong, muttering in boyish excitement, gave a sharp exclamation. He pushed by me and embraced Balt in a bear hug. “You’re a hero! You’ll be awarded medals for this historic salvage, Balt. Those are live specimens—real Mentera!”
“I knew you’d be pleased, lord. Hundreds more tanks are back there. Maybe no more of these live bugs that I could see. The other tanks are cracked and drained of their life-giving fluids. There was a fleet of mantis-like ships.” He filled Mong in on all the gory details.
Mong stood rapt and hungrily drank in the information like a kid learning about the birds and bees. “It’s a food factory!” he rasped. “A human-processing plant. We’ll assemble teams to investigate. The technology is staggering. Look at the accessories on their tops. Full-fledged feeding cables with intact circuitry.”
The Star Lord’s fleshy lips pursed in satisfaction. Mong was in high spirits. “A gold mine out there. Enough to study for years. Enough to defeat my enemies and ensure my rule of the galaxy.”
He let his gaze pass over the nearest Mentera, the black, hulking locust with red eyes, quivering antennae and sharp pincers. His jaw hung in awe. “Incredible. They are such beautiful specimens.”
I gazed in horrified incomprehension. Walking, mutant grasshoppers which enslaved humans for centuries and this fuck worships them like some totem god of the past? It was beyond lunacy.
“Excuse me, but am I missing something?” I croaked. “How can a vampire that fed on countless humans be ‘beautiful’?”
“They were an advanced race,” he declared in a defensive voice.
Was it adoration I heard in that tone?
“They were scavengers. Soul-sucking parasites.”
“So you think,” Mong sneered. “But they knew how to establish their supremacy and become all powerful.”
“As you intend? You’re insane!” I peeled off my mask and threw it on the floor.
Mong flashed me a sadistic grin. “Perhaps, Rusco, but I prefer to think of myself as a visionary. Your opinions of me mean less than dogshit. Congratulations on your first salvage. There’ll be more to come.”
Chapter 18
Hadruk had two lackeys escort one broken-fingered Rusco out across the common grounds. Pagodas and prayer halls nestled amidst banyans, garden fountains and trim lawns. We waited at the stone terrace of a minor shrine for some time. I couldn’t make heads or tails of the archaic deity to which it was dedicated. We traded no words and they kept me under close watch. Mong met up with us and dismissed his men. He beckoned me with a gracious hand toward the main lecture hall with its red-and-white peaked roof. I studied the man’s swarthy face, wondering what went on behind that complex skull of his.
“What now?” I asked. “No new journey to locust land?”
“Since you have shown sense,” Mong said, “you’ll get a bonus. I invite you to attend the lectures of the ‘brotherhood’, the brotherhood of the future.”
“Where’s Blest?”
“Your comrade’s being taken care of. Quit asking about him. I plan to make a better man of you. That’s what you’re here for…for that you should be grateful.”
I snorted air through my nose. None of the residents ambling about, monks or nuns or whatever they were, seemed to have any official status here or occupation. They wore no weapons at their belts. All were plainly dressed, in smocks and robes without frills and for the most part quite ordinary. But I could tell something was wrong with them. They walked funny, like stilted starlings, and they looked out of their eye sockets sideways, as if something had been done to their brains.
“No guns?” I muttered.
“Firearms are prohibited at Othwan,” Mong explained, “with the sole exception of me and my lieutenants.”
“Hmph.” I absorbed the information. “Not so good when a disciple goes ballistic and clips the headmaster in the forehead.”
“You’ve a morbid imagination.”
“Well, you can thank my mother for that. Her genes.”
Mong ignored the remark. “Step up the pace, Rusco. We’ve a big day ahead of us.”
I noticed loudspeakers strung up on every building. From time to time a singsong voice would come over announcing the time of day:
“One o’clock and all is well! Residents of the Brotherhood, please proceed to Prayer Hall #1. Seva duty, as a reminder, will commence an hour earlier, since the Celebration of
